A Sunday in Roscoe, A Monday in the ER

Its been so hectic lately that I decided Sunday was as good a time as any to invite myself to my sister’s place and see my little nephew. It was a very rushed visit that involved doing a lot of driving all in one day, but it was so worth it. Little Logan is cuter than ever and his new thing is grinning hugely to show off his 3 fancy teeth. When we first got there, Logan was all smiles, but after a while he got sleepy and napped for several hours. My sister felt bad that we had come to see him and he was so interested in napping, but I think it worked out pretty well. We had some time to visit with Logan, and then while he was sleeping we had time to catch up with Michelle and Mark. Logan did wake up with just enough time for a brief outing to a park by the river, which was lovely. As always, it was very hard to leave them, but at least Auntie M didn’t cry as much this time as when she left Logan to go back to the jungle last April.

It was back to the daily grind on Monday. Kind of a wretched day, actually. I gave a presentation in journal club about the dog predation event I witnessed that lead to the deaths of Scooby and his mother. I wasn’t thinking that this kind of presentation was that big of a deal, but some of the higher-ups in the department (who, mind you, do not study the behavior of wild primates) cut me down, basically saying that this was shoddy science because it was an anecdote and therefore intrinsically meaningless and a waste of everybody’s time. I never would have thought that a simple journal club presentation like this would land me up in my office crying for a an hour afterwards, but you just can’t predict everything.

So I came home still in somewhat of a grim mood, and even though I just felt like pouting, I forced myself to get off my rear end and go running. It was about 6:40pm when I got back from that; Rob still wasn’t home from his Monday night bike ride. I checked my phone to see if he’d left a message while I was running, but there was nothing. When I got out of the shower, my phone was ringing. It was Rob’s mom, who prefaced the conversation with, “Everything’s going to be okay, but…” She said Rob was in the ER and had been trying to get ahold of me (did I take a really long shower or something??), then she let me go and in a couple seconds Rob called back. His voice sounded like his mouth was stuffed gauze or marshmallows and he said, “A car kind of bumped me, and I fell into a ditch.” Kind of bumped me, what a Rob thing to say. I was still dripping from the shower; I threw on the first pair of pants and shirt I saw and rushed to the hospital.

When I got there, I was expecting to see blood and twisted limbs, so I was much relieved when I saw Rob calmly lying in a bed—not too much blood to be seen—giving a report to a police officer. Rob had been out in the country on his way home from the ride when he got to an intersection where he did not have a stop sign, but the lane perpendicular to him did. As he approached the intersection, a car was also approaching perpendicular to him, and it stopped at the stop sign. Assuming that the car had seen him and was stopping—as it was supposed to—to let him pass through, Rob proceeded through the intersection. Well, apparently the driver hadn’t seen him approaching, because as Rob got into the intersection, the driver started to go. At first Rob slammed on his brakes, but realizing he wouldn’t be able to stop soon enough, he then tried to goose it and serve to avoid getting hit. He managed to get his body out of the line of fire, but the car struck his rear wheel and he lost control of the bike. He skidded, then flipped over the handlebars and landed shoulder-first in what he described as “a very deep ditch” on the side of the road.

The driver called the ambulance for him right away. As Rob was lying there in excruciating pain, he heard a guy’s voice say to him, “Rob are you okay?” and it turned out it was our former neighbor—the guy who lives next door to our old house. At the time Rob was maybe about 2 miles away from our old neighborhood, and this guy had been out for a run in the country. I guess he stayed around until the ambulance got there and he took Rob’s bike and helmet home with him so that we can get it later. Of all the things!

Shortly after I got to the ER, they took Rob away for X-rays, and in the midst of this, Barb and Bruce arrived. When they heard their baby had been in a crash, they drove all the way over here just to be there for him! They are the parents of the year.

Eventually someone who said he was a doctor told us that Rob’s X-rays showed no breaks, which is good news. He may have injured some of the tendons in his rotator cuff (shoulder), so if that doesn’t get better by the end of the week, he should go to his doctor. I was really relieved. At first I was remembering that hospital we’d had to go to in Moyogalpa and thinking how much better care he was receiving here in the US, but then I stepped back a minute and thought maybe not. They didn’t even clean up the “road rash” he’d gotten on his face from the fall off the bike, and they didn’t give him ice or anything for his extensive bruising and possibly torn rotator cuff tendons. But I don’t want to complain, I am mainly just so relieved and so happy that he is okay. It could have been so much worse. When I first heard the news that Rob had been hit by a car, my mind jumped to all sorts of terrifying conclusions, so at the moment I can’t think of anything else but how thankful I am that he is okay.

When he woke up this morning, he said he felt “B-ok” (instead of “A-ok”). He went ahead and went to work, but I suppose this will keep him off the bike for a few days at least. I’ve got loads to do, so I’d better get going. I’ll keep you posted. Thanks for reading!

October Fool's Day

Happy October Fools’ Day. Its a little-known holiday that less than a handful of people of people in the world celebrate. Rob and I celebrate it because the beginning of another October means its been something like 10 years since we first met. Also its our friend Cara’s birthday.

Over the weekend Rob put up one of the hammocks that we got in Masaya:

Also, this weekend my friend Aimee was in the paper for her new website What Friends Do. If you don’t get the News Gazette, you can read the article here.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading.

Ragfields on the Atlantic

This weekend, Rob and I went to Wilmington, North Carolina to the wedding of Rob’s friends Meryl and Joe. Its on the Altantic Coast—that’s a long way away from Urbana. On Friday, we loaded up Iris and drove as far as Greensboro (about 12 hours away), where we stayed with our friend Matt, who we haven’t seen in ages. Then onto the wedding festivities (3-1/2 hours more driving) on Saturday.

The wedding was in a beautiful, historic cathedral in downtown Wilmington. The ceremony was a little weird—the priest told a story about his brother-in-law who died of liver cancer, and at one point he called Meryl “Marl,” which is not her name at all. Everyone in the cathedral, including the bride and groom, was trying not to laugh.

Congratulations, "Marl" and Joe

Ragfields at the wedding. We clean up real good, I think.

After the wedding, we had about 2 hours until the reception started, so Rob and I and his friends hung out in downtown Wilmington. We found a super-ritzy ice cream shop, and Rob made a bee-line for it. That surprised me, since he usually only eats ice cream about once or twice per year. But I guess this was his big splurge. The choices at this shop were overwhelming; you could get all sorts of mix-ins and flavors, etc. I could not make a decision faced with all these options and told Rob to pick out something for me. He chose plain vanilla, and for himself, chocolate. It was a wise choice—the best vanilla ice cream I’ve ever had, as it ought to have been with a $4 price tag!

By the time the reception started (at a fancy historic mansion downtown), it was pouring down rain! The bride and groom had to enter underneath an umbrella, and the party—which was supposed to be outside—had to be moved indoors. The rain didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits though; we stayed out until the wee hours of the morning.

Melissa and Erin sharing a slow-dance at the reception

On Sunday, Rob and I went to the beach, and I got to see the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. Those who are familiar with my obsession with the ocean will understand how much I enjoyed this. In addition to hanging out at the beach, I ran about 7 miles and Rob rode his bike (which we had packed in Iris). The ocean was just a bit chilly, but it felt especially good after all of this. After taking a salty dip, I lay out on the beach and actually fell asleep for a while (nice, considering my recent bout of insomnia), although this did result in me getting quite sunburned. Oh well, I guess it will probably be my last sunburn for a while.

Ragfields at the Atlantic Ocean

We drove back to Greensboro on Sunday night to stay with Matt again. We watched him play a soccer game, which was fun, and I actually had to use Rob’s nifty new iPhone to do some work (catching up on emails).

Matt and Rob

Ragfields on the way home

We spent the day today (Monday) driving back to Urbana. The party is officially over, and I’m back to the manic levels of stress that keep me up all night. I’ve traded in my “block grant” this semester (a stipend for doing nothing except readjusting and working on my dissertation) to TA a course, and next semester I have accepted a position to teach a course all by myself. As in, there is no other professor… I am the professor. I am excited but terrified and hoping this is a good opportunity that will help me get a job when I’m finished, rather than something that is going to prevent me from ever finishing. At any rate, its been a very long day, and its time for me to take a Tylonol PM and try to get some sleep so I can get up and work tomorrow. Thanks for reading.

Back in Urbana, where they're proud of the truly important things in life....

Insomnia

You know, there’s really nothing on TV past 3am. There’s not a whole lot on at 2:30 either, but last night I did catch the last 10 minutes of some Animal Planet show about paternal behavior in penguins and seahorses. That was pretty cool, except for the overzealous narrator, who seemed to be gearing this towards people with extremely short attention spans. When that got over, the next show was about scorpions (with an equally overzealous narrator) and all the other channels just had infomercials selling weight loss products.

Its been over a month since I’ve been home from Nicaragua, and I’m still not sleeping. I wasn’t really sleeping that well in Nicaragua either… and come to think of it, that whole year of proposal-writing prior to going to Nicaragua was wracked with heart palpitations and insomnia as well. Let it suffice to say, I really need some sleep.

Last night I did some reading to make me sleepy, but that just got me all riled up about my dissertation and the fact that I’ve been home for over a month and haven’t even started it. TV didn’t work (watching a show about scorpions wasn’t helping), so I finally started cleaning the house. I scrubbed the bathroom from floor to ceiling (by the way, I’ve found that baking soda is the best thing to clean the tub with—it lifts grime, is cheap, and is environmentally responsible) and then moved onto the kitchen. Having scrubbed myself into the living room (and not wanting to track across the wet kitchen floor), I finally laid down on the couch about 4 or 4:30.

If I’d just stayed up a couple more hours, I would have been awake to receive the email Eduardo sent me when he got to “work” at the Hacienda at 6am (Wednesdays are his day to work). I’ve gotten about 3 messages from him since he mentioned that he had a problem with his kidneys, and none of them have returned to this issue despite the fact that I have asked him about it repeatedly. He just says “Hola Melissa, como estas?” and that’s it.

As a result of getting very little sleep, I felt like a zombie all day and looked like I was either hung over or strung out. But surprisingly, I’m not tired; I just kind of feel like I’m stuck in a loop. I keep starting things (like a load of laundry or reading a journal article) but interrupt myself to go to something else (like clean up a mess or begin reading a different journal article), so I’ve gotten nothing done all day.

This weekend is the big 10 year high school reunion, but I won’t be revisiting the past. Instead, Rob and I are going to North Carolina to the wedding of one of his friends. I’m hoping that Amy will fill me in on all the reunion details; maybe I’ll get myself together and try to make it to my 20th.

At any rate, I’d better get going and try for a good night’s sleep tonight. Oh, and for those who read my last entry about the bike crash—I am all healed now except for a scab on my knee. And Pat, don’t feel bad about laughing! I realized that that’s why I write these things. Its like the wise poet Emily Saliers once said, “You’ve got to laugh at yourself; otherwise, you’d cry your eyes out!”

Like riding a bike

To tell you the truth, I never really liked riding a bike. When we were little, sometimes Amy would ride her bike and I would jog along beside. I just never felt all that comfortable on two wheels. Over the years, I’ve managed to increase my comfort level, but the problem is, I am just not very good at it. I do pretty well on Iris II—my “hybrid” bike (it has intermediate tires), but my road bike…that’s a different story.

A few years ago, Rob found me the teeniest, tiniest, fastest little road bike with the skinniest tires you can imagine. I call her Ida May. She kind of terrifies me, because her light weight makes her more difficult for me to control, plus, you can get going really fast really quickly on this super skinny bike. Despite my fears, I’ve taken Ida on some pretty tough rides, including up (and down) the tallest mountain in Tennessee. Don’t get too impressed though—I am not very good at it.

I haven’t ridden Ida May since we’ve been back from Nicaragua, and I’ve been growing ever more eager to do so. Yesterday I jumped at the chance when Rob told me that he and cousin Kevin were going for a ride after work, and I was welcome to join them. I had Rob make some last minute adjustments to Ida (including raising the seat), and off we went. Well, off they went. I actually fell off my bike while trying to start it—as I was coasting down the driveway. Hm, maybe that seat was too high afterall. Thankfully the guys didn’t see this, though they probably did wonder what was taking me so long to catch up to them. I’d landed squarely on my left knee in the mini-crash and to be quite honest, it was a little bloody and didn’t feel so great. I pushed it out of my mind best I could and just proceeded onward.

As we came to a 4-way stop on the way out of town, I realized that my feet were miles from the ground and in order to stop, I was going to have to leap off of the bike. I felt queasy. Luckily, we didn’t have to make a complete stop, and soon we were out on the open road. We kept going for a while, but I felt terrible. In fact, I had an intense desire to get off the bike and never ride again. I sidled up to Rob and said that I thought my seat was too high; he said no problem, we would stop and adjust it. So there I was, coming to a stop, when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make it happen and I flew off the seat—landing very hard on the bike frame—before toppling over onto my left knee (for the second time). Ouch. At that point Rob realized that he did not have his Allen wrench with him, so my seat would have to stay where it was at. I was trying to play it cool, but believe me, I was in a considerable amount of pain. Five miles from home—what can you do? We looped around to head back to our place, and I struggled to pedal onward, into the driving wind. As we got back towards town, I became increasingly nervous about the 4-way stops and stop-lights we would encounter on our way in. Suppose I should have another unceremonious dismount and end up on the pavement in 4 lanes of traffic? I did not relish the thought.

Just about a quarter mile from home, I decided I had to get off the bike. So I pulled off and slowed myself to a stop—no problems, even graceful this time. I have no idea why the high seat and/or toe clips had proved problematic to me before, but I was just glad to be off the bike and within walking distance of home. I encouraged the guys to continue, so they ended up heading out for another loop while I hobbled home. I hadn’t thought that 2 slow-moving crashes could cause such damage, but—without getting too gory—I discovered that I had shed a fair amount of blood. I actually felt quite wretched, but that didn’t stop me from making dinner for everybody (okay, it was just black bean garden burgers), though all the while I wondered why it is the curse of my gender to feel the need to prepare food for others even after enduring 2 bike crashes and substantial blood loss.

I was hoping it would all be better in the morning, but I think I actually feel worse. My weekly bike trip to the farmers market is out, as is my plan for a 12-mile marathon training run. I’ll be as good as new soon enough, it will probably just take a couple of days. Thanks for reading!

And so it begins

I finally got S.L. to read an abstract I wrote for this big conference (an abstract is like a mini-version of the paper you will present), and he said it was no good. Well actually, he said it needed to address larger theoretical issues in order to be worthy of the meetings. That’s all well and good, but the abstracts are due on September 15th, so it doesn’t give me a whole lot of time to work out a grand theory (note, this is something that I initially wrote in June, because I like to plan ahead). To say the least, last night was unpleasant. I was trying to make my case-specific report of Scooby’s death fit into some theoretical paradigm, hating it, and sobbing hysterically because I wished was a physical therapist instead of a grad student. If there’s one thing I hate (actually, there are a lot of things I hate), its trying to pull something together in the 11th hour (Amy, was it Mrs. W who always said that…”The eleventh hour..?”) I’m a planner. I plan everything, and I do it ahead of time. Its just the way I function. But 99.9% of the world prefers to fly by the seat of their pants and do everything at the last minute. S.L. is extraordinarily busy (this is the kind of life I can look forward to if I actually make it through this thing) so he doesn’t have any time to go over my stuff until it becomes absolutely necessary. Hence the 11th hour. So I spent an vomitous evening of self-doubt, but in the end I somehow managed to emphasize the theoretical issues raised by the dog predation incidents I observed on Ometepe, and S.L. gave it the thumbs up. {{Big sigh of relief}}. For the moment everything is calm.

Then this morning I had an email from Eduardo, my first in a couple of weeks. He assured me that the Hurricane had not harmed Ometepe, he said that he missed me, and he asked if I could send a photo of Rob and me with my family. He also asked if I could sell him a “little” computer to help him learn English. Well, I was willing to “sell” him my flashlight and hiking boots for a smile, but I’m not sure that a computer transaction is likely. We’ll have to see. He would look really cute working on a little iMac though.

I had asked him if he’d climbed the volcano yet (he was planning on doing this around the time I left) and in his reply he said that he could not climb the volcano because he has a problem with his kidneys and the hike would cause him too much pain. Hearing that sent me into a state for sure. I kept hoping that I misunderstood his email (it is difficult to decipher his little words, since he doesn’t know a lot of spelling or grammar rules), so I had my Spanish-speaking friend Frida look at the email, and she agreed with my interpretation. What could be wrong with the kidneys of a 12-year old little boy?! I haven’t been very productive today—I just keep pacing around thinking of poor little Eduardo and wondering what it is that is wrong and hoping that it is not serious but trying to figure out a way to get him cured if it is. Let’s everybody keep your fingers crossed on this one. Thanks for reading.

Biking with flowers, running in the rain

All week I worked really hard writing a report worthy of publication in a scientific journal about the dog predation incident leading to the deaths of Scooby and his mother. There is a conference next month, and it is really important that I get this written up so that I can present the results. I kept writing and writing but would end up deleting everything because it just didn’t sound right. Finally I realized: this incident is not about predation. Its an issue of human encroachment on primate habitats, rather than about dogs per se. So, I re-cast the whole framework of this thing and started over, for better or worse. On the plus side, my old blog Nicablogua actually helped me in this endeavor. I was able to go back through my entries and create more of a time-line of the gringos’ activities on the land: when they dug the water line, when they began construction on the cabin, etc. So it was kind of cool that I was able to pull some data from the blog. I’ve still got a lot of work to do on producing a publishable paper though.

Many have asked for an update concerning the on-going saga of my hair. Earlier in the week, my mom found a product called “Color Off” that was supposed to restore your hair to its natural color if you’ve accidentally done something to it that made it too dark. So I applied Color Off, and to my surprise, it worked quite well. You’re supposed to leave it on for up to 20 minutes, but when I saw my roots turning red after just 10, I decided to wash it out. The end result is that my hair is definitely lighter than immediately after the hair coloring incident but not quite like it was before. I’m somewhere across between myself and Anne of Green Gables. Sorry, I don’t have any pictures yet but maybe someday I’ll remember to take one.

My latest thing is going to the Farmers’ Market, which is held in downtown Urbana every Saturday morning. We live only about a 1/2 mile away, so it is a much speedier bike ride than when we used to live some 7 miles farther west. I am somewhat obsessed with arugula, which is actually kind of hard to find (and expensive) at the grocery store, but the Blue Moon Farm of Urbana sells fabulous bags of organic arugala at the farmer’s market. Another current favorite of mine is Green Zebra tomatoes, also grown by the Blue Moon Farm. In addition to produce, I’ve also started buying flowers at the Farmer’s market. It makes for a picturesque sight—me riding home on my bike, loaded down with a basket full of produce, and sticking out the top is a bright bouquet of locally grown, pesticide-free flowers. This is Urbana though—so pretty much everyone else is doing the same thing. I love it here.

After my farmer’s market excursion on Saturday morning, I went for a brief run. The sky had been a little bit gray before I started, but about 2-1/2 miles into the run, it started to pour. It was great. For the first time in forever, I finally felt like me again. Instead of heading for home I went farther. Its been so long since I actually felt good while I was running that I had to take advantage of it. Plus, it was a good excuse to be outside in the rain. We’ve had rain a couple of times since we’ve been back home, and I always have this urge to go outside while it is raining—I guess its just another hold-over from spending a year in the jungle. When I finally came home, I was soaking wet but felt better than I had in a long time.

I followed it up with doing a 10-mile run today. Yes: if I am serious about attempting marathon #6, I need to do these long runs. While in Nicaragua I did maybe 3 or 4 runs amounting to 9 miles, but I haven’t done anything in double-digits for well over a year. I was afraid I might be disappointed in my performance—comparing today’s endeavor to my former self who could bust out a 20-mile training run like it was a cake walk. But I must say, I did quite well. There was a slight amount of bleakness around mile 4.6, but I just kept going and got through it, and I even ended the run feeling great. So I’m pretty happy at the moment—I think I can actually pull this off, as long as I can manage my time to fit in all the training runs.

Rob and I ended up the weekend by having dinner with some friends. They’ve got two kids, who have reached the age where they’ve just started playing musical instruments. After dinner, the kids entertained us with their musical stylings—one on bassoon, one on trombone. It was quite precious really. The little boy on trombone made me think of my friend David B., who used to play trombone when we were kids. Remembering this made me feel kind of old, but I was also glad to have come this far.

Alright, I’d better get going for now; thanks for reading!